Inertia Not Found in Nature
by Orrunan
Summary: Not all Quintessons are chaotic evil, some Decepticons can love unselfishly. This is cold comfort, however, when they cause Spike to become the pivotal point for interplanetary conflict. With defectors like these who needs enemies?
1. Chapter 1

**Road to Hell is paved with?**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

The storm was loud enough to wake the dead and in a way it already had. It had come out of nowhere, taking everyone by surprise. The climate control on Quintessa hadn't failed since the Cybertronian uprising, but now maelstrom of ice and wind swept over the land covered in great mushroom-like cities and tropical siliconswamps. In the chaos only the airfield control noticed the tiny private yacht breaking orbit and they weren't in any position to force the issue. It was a whole deca-cycle later that another ship departed from Quintessa, this one with permission of the Ruling Court. When the airfield control gave it permission to leave Quintessa airspace a small amalgamspike downloaded into the AC mainframe sent a warning to the fugitive yacht.

"This is a terrible idea. This is the most stupid desperation tactics ever employed," junior undersecretary Hepatizon groaned as she pressed the small container she was holding tighter against her chest. It was a very unremarkable-looking container, simple and smooth and light, dim gray with a small hole for a key chip. Hepatizon knew she couldn't hear anything through the soundproof walls of the cube, but she could have sworn she heard soft metal rattle against the titanium restlessly, seizer conduits searching for something to hold on to for dear life.

Even though she _knew _the life-support was more than adequate for a journey this short. The life-support her second-ever friend wouldn't need if it wasn't for her. Hepatizon wasn't accustomed to dealing with guilt. Maybe that was why she had reacted so badly. And now she had gotten Molybdochalkos into the same mess, Molybdochalkos whom she full well knew incapable of denying her anything.

She dimmed her optics and groaned. Could she do nothing right anymore?

"We won't betray you, Spessartine. I'm just whining, pay me no attention." She wouldn't, but she was petrified. Inquirata would vivisect both her and Molybdochalkos if he got his hands on them now and that would be if he decided to go easy on them and not hand them over to the Judges. Her quintronium mesh tentacles, elegantly adorned with interlacing spirals and triangles painted with golden and red mineral paints, were lashing against the floor and she couldn't seem to control them at all.

"Hardly the stupidest ever, Hep. If we only can get to this human, Spike Witwicky, they'll have no other options but to protect Spessartine. And they will have to protect us since we are the only ones who can keep the human alive at that point," Molybdochalkos argued gently, concentrating most of his attention on navigating towards the Oort Cloud.

There was one big but, which Molybdochalkos had to know also; he might be dronecaste, but he wasn't _stupid_. They were gambling their lives and Spessartine on Inquirata not offering to collaborate with the Autobots to separate Spessartine from the human. They had fair odds for Hepatizon couldn't imagine the Autobots asking anything from the Magister Scientist and a Quintesson such as Inquirata probably would never think of anything so helpful and mutually profitable. It was still a risk, though, and they had to get to the human first for this to work. They couldn't have that long a head start and the Autobots would be on guard, against Decepticons more than anything, but that was small comfort.

But it was Spessartine whom she had practically lured to her death on Quintessa, and it was her and Molybdochalkos. She looked at the humanoid pilot, the worker, at his legs and small head and then her own tentacles. She had been built to high caste, been apprenticed by Inquirata himself and then allowed to branch out into politics which had been a great honour. Because she had been custom-bred and he mass-produced for manual labor, because of differences in build, they would have had no future on Quintessa. But even though he was of crude make, mercilessly functional and blocky, his laughter was beautiful and his nature very sweet and it just wasn't right! Maybe now…

"I will protect you both," Molybdochalkos promised with solemn voice. Hepatizon leaned back in her seat, pressing her bulbous head against the rich, purple pillows.

All Quintessons were atheists by default. Any higher powers were merely constructs of minds that couldn't bear the truth of the chaotic existence without crutches. There was no reason, no purpose or great plan and always before it had been what little freedom life had to offer, but now she understood the desperate need for someone to look after her, to look after the Universe, and they were going to be Autobots in quick enough order if everything went right. Autobots were religious.

"From your mouth to Primus' audio," she whispered the name of the God of slaves.

* * *

There was a bitter chill on the desert that evening. Desert nights tended to be chilly of course, but the air itself seemed on edge, lashing out with an icy bite. The sun hung low on the horizon, deep red dyeing the clouds and the small, vague silhouette of the city. Spike was very, very glad that his best friend in the world, any world you could name and then some, was warm inside because right when he stopped running he was going to be so cold.

There were many slightly bizarre things about being friends with beings who were so different from humans. He had gotten over the oddity of spending time in Bumblebee's _body cavity _the first. Or the second, the first had been that he was big, made of metal and could transform into a really sweet car, but that was kind of obvious. The third was that Bumblebee was older than his species, even though most of that time had been spent in stasis. That Bumblebee had in fact been a femme once had been by far the most shocking.

Traditionally all new sparks had come from Vector Sigma, as seen fit by the Prime and the Ministry of Population and Resources to the betterment of the Cybertronian society. (His eyes had crossed when Ratchet had explained that part at length.) There was an alternative way, which was diverting spark matter from an already existing spark little by little to an incubator unit so the mother spark has enough time to regenerate. This created a personal offspring for the femme, and by upgrading oneself with an incubator unit anybot could become a spark-creator; a femme. Yes, they could switch and his male best friend was in fact a _mother _to a femme named Moonracer he would probably never meet.

Carly loved that, though. And even with this all maybe the most surprising thing was how similar they were to humans, deep down. And deep down Bumblebee was like a teenager like him, except for the professional soldier and loving mother part.

How that was even possible he didn't know, but he knew it was true. He was the one Bumblebee was throwing water balloons at after all.

He didn't hear as sound, the shadow suddenly falling on him only thing that alerted him before there was a splash and water was running down his back, trickling and cold and exhilarating. Spike shrieked and turned around. The red light caught the edges of Bumblebee's armor and cast the rest of him into shadows. Rather than throw and risk missing with his last balloon Spike never stopped running and slapped the blue balloon against Bumblebee's tight.

"How come… you can be so silent?" he panted a question. He made sound when running over the sand and he was the small, light one.

"I _am _a scout," Bumblebee said proudly; small and lightly armed he might be, but Spike knew he took much pride in his abilities. "It comes with the package. It took some getting used to, though. There isn't sand on Cybertron."

Spike frowned. Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember seeing anything but solid ground on Cybertron when he had been there to rescue his dad. Sure, at the moment the ground had been least of his worries as it hadn't been shaking with earthquakes like on Earth and Shockwave had been doing who knew what to Sparkplug. But all in all Cybertron had been like a giant Autobot – or rather Decepticon seeing how the power balance was there – base, if not very well maintained.

"There isn't erosion on Cybertron?" he asked. Spike loved hearing of Cybertron. Earth was so down to earth, pun very much intended, and Cybertron was something alien and exotic and terribly exiting. Bumblebee whizzed a negative and shook his head.

"There never was much in the way of weather on Cybertron. It doesn't rotate on its axis so the jet streams are very stable and there is very little water. Plus, the surface nanites reintegrate all small particles and no major damage went without fixing before the war." Nanites? Spike had a feeling that he had heard Ratchet speak of them once, or maybe it had been dad and Wheeljack, but that wasn't the part that had caught his interest.

"Cybertron is in synchronous rotation with its sun? There is a day half and a night half?" He hadn't spent that much time on the planet that first time. He and Carly had both been really busy the second time also, when they had gone to search for the Dinobots and Cybertronium, and again sightseeing had been their lowest priority. He didn't think they had spent four whole hours there.

"Yes, for us the hours, using the human word, are actually latitudes, though we have thirty of them. The sunside pole is midday, the nightside pole is midnight," Bumblebee recited happily. When they had first met he has been reluctant to speak of his home planet, but now he seemed to take pleasure in it. Spike thought maybe that meant that his friend was less homesick now. He certainly hoped so; he wanted Earth to be home for Bumblebee so much it hurt.

He couldn't bear the thought of his best friend returning to Cybertron one day and leaving him behind even though he knew he was just being selfish.

He wanted to say something to Bumblebee, though he had no idea what it was, he only knew he felt kind of melancholic all of a sudden. And before he could come up with anything there was a particularly chilly gust of wind and Spike was suddenly very aware that he was dripping wet. A shiver ran through his back and now the twilight was so dim he could see Bumblebee's optics glowing like blue stars.

"Can you transform now? I'm freezing my aft off here now," he pleaded. Bumblebee made the trilling-clicking sound that was Cybertronian equivalent to a nod and his armor plates pivoted and swiveled in happy yellow and calm gray streaks of colour, his insides seemed to fall down, turn inside out and compact at the same time, his plating moving again and turning and twisting. He never got tired to watching his friends transforming. It was a dance of sharp metal and colourful wires, like crazy flowers closing bud and blooming again.

Carly liked his poetic side and it hadn't even existed before that fateful day in the power plant. A part of him had screamed how they were all going to die, a smaller part had taken one look at the Decepticons, seekers like jewel-coloured birds of prey, and thought how it would have been so cool if they hadn't tried to kill everyone, but when all was over there had been a fledgling part of him that had watched Jazz transform and thought: that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

That was the side of him that had gotten the girl.

"If you catch cold Ratchet is going to nail us both to the medberths. Hop in, save us the pain," Bumblebee said and Spike grinned, taking a step to do just so. Pain exploded in his back, racing up and down his spine and he saw how the ground got closer ever so slowly, like in a dream.

Spike hardly felt it when his body hit the ground, but he definitely could taste the sand in his mouth. He tried to spit it off, but his mouth was dry, dry like sand. He lay dully on ground, watching as yellow ankles pivoted and twisted, cold and nauseous. Bumblebee was transforming. His weapons were humming ominously, the wind seemed to have abated and the hum was filling his whole skull like a swarm of bees. Decepticons attack, he thought. The ankles jumped away, he could only see darkening desert floor and the ground _shook._ Bumblebee was shooting and someone was shooting back.

I don't want to die, he thought and felt his eyes prickling. He really, really didn't want to die. Spike forced his abused muscles to move and pushed himself to his hands and knees; he wasn't going to die, not this stupid a death after everything. The world was dimming dark around the edges of his sight, it swirled like Bumblebee's armor plates and he tasted bile in his mouth and his stomach heaved. Spike threw up on the sands, his eyes still wet. That was when he realised, when his heart was beating like it was trying to hammer its way out of his chest and hope had all but left him, that he could only hear two guns.

And just like that he knew they would both be alright. It was only one enemy. He gulped deep, slow breaths to get some measure of control over his body and scramble to cover. That was when big but gentle cords hands him from behind and lifted him off the ground like he was a baby, supporting his head carefully.

It was a gross mix of animalistic bootiliciousness and caricatured ugliness. It was probably female and almost definitely a femme, but that was all Spike could tell. There were some kind of muted green and purple metal-tentacles on her bloated head that almost looked like braids in the darkness falling and there was all around strange flesh-and-blood look to the features even when the cold, hard surface of the hands cupping him against the femme's chest confirmed her to be made of metal indeed. It didn't have legs at all, but tentacles extending from her tenpin-like lower body. The optics were ghost green and he had never seen green optics before.

"You aren't a Decepticon, are you?" he asked too surprised to be all that afraid, even. But the shooting was going on a little way from them and he couldn't see Bumblebee.

"Not even a little bit," the strange femme said and the green optics dimmed for a fraction of a second. Her voice was strangely hissing like there was something wrong with her vocalizer. Spike tried to twist his body to look where Bumblebee had gone and pain flashed up and down his back again like fire, bringing tears to his eyes.

"What you want with me? If you are looking for a hostage, that has been tried before and not successfully, just so you know," he hissed defiantly.

"I'm very sorry." That was only warning Spike got.

Something touched his head and strange shapes exploded in Spike's brain. There wasn't any pain anymore, only swirling utopia of hallucinogenic, flowing colours and noise that drowned all his thoughts. He was detached, distanced, floating on warm waves and only barely aware that something was wriggling in the midst of it, susurration permeating all colours and swaying. Bending him, swaying with ease like dancing, having its way with him. Staying within him, swaying him.

For a second his mind cleared and he could see Bumblebee's worried face, his blue eyes – optics, not eyes – shining much too brightly, all was too bright and clear, and hear everything again.

"Spike! Speak to me Spike, are you all right?" Bumblebee's voice was high pitched; strained. There was something lumpy at the back of his head that _hurt._

Spike wanted to answer, really, but darkness came upon him and he fell into cool, painless unawareness.

* * *

On Cybertron day and night were not time units, but locations. Iacon, 15.00, once the proud, beautiful midday capital of Autobots, was now Shockwave's base of operations. The city was now a strange mishmash of broken brilliance and well-maintained but graceless functionalism; damaged spires that still broke the light of the sun into all hues of the spectre stood next to an angular titanium lattice communications tower. Open, high buildings with many windows and high ceilings, towers and terraces gaining as unrestricted a view of the sky as possible, had now fallen from grace. In many places they had given way to blocky, cost-effective, easily defended buildings, but it was obvious that the reconstruction had been halted halfway. The war wasn't going well for Decepticons anymore.

The door to the sectioned off room that led to Shockwave's main laboratory slid open, the sound echoing through the base. Fearswoop entered slowly, allowing the door to slide close behind him.

"You summoned me, Lord Shockwave?" he asked, sending the databurst _I apologize for interrupting. _Shockwave was very strict on protocol and ignoring even a small part of it would get the unlucky con immediately and ruthlessly reprimanded.

Fearswoop didn't exactly fear Shockwave, but he did respect the mech that knew how to take and own loyalty of those under him. He respected Calabi-Yau's creator, but he hated him also, though nowhere near as much as he hated Megatron.

"The intelligence department has discovered intel on one of the four unaccounted for Queens," a monotonic voice went straight to the business. A jolt went through Fearswoop and he sent a quick praise to Primus that the mech he served was not Soundwave. Had Shockwave known what he was considering he would have been executed without even court martial.

Most of Cybertron belonged to Decepticons now, only hours 28.30 – 02.15 were under Autobot control, fiercely protected by Elita 1's partisans. But while the Autobot femmes were the underdrones now it was a waiting game the Decepticons were loosing and Fearswoop was intelligent enough to recognize this. Decepticons had, at the peak of their reign, outnumbered Autobots ten to three, but things were changing now. They were dying casualty by casualty, had been dying for millions of years and there were no replacements to their ranks. Autobots had the femme units and above all Autobots had Vector Sigma.

There were more differences between Decepticons and Autobots than a mere sigil. Their technology and the bots' had parted ways over eleven million years ago when the Quintessons had designed them for different purposes. No true Decepticon could be befitted with an incubator. The few femmes Decepticons had were all defected or reprogrammed Autobots.

"If we got it and we could combine it with a suitable sentient organic we could raise the hives, my lord. We could take the midnight." Fearswoops optics faced the floor deferentially, but his mind was running lightvorn an astrosecond. The Queen could do so much more than just raise a disciplined army of the hives. The Queen could be used as focal point for Calabi-Yau.

Calabi-Yau of thousand faces, creation of Shockwave, sparkling of peacetime who had been destroyed at Lord Megatron's order, scattered all over the Universe. Strange, patient Calabi-Yau, a supporter and a construction among a race of warriors whom he had courted a long, long time ago. Rage flooded Fearswoop's mind even after the millennia that had passed by when he remembered that terrible orn. Calabi-Yau had been a true Decepticon at spark, but Megatron had no trusted her, oh no, not someone so powerful. He preferred the Spacebridge Network insentient, thank you not very much.

The first true femme created Decepticon in their history had also been the last. Yet again another sign of Lord Megatron's short-sightedness.

He needed a plan: Megatron would not sit idly and let him revive Calabi-Yau, Shockwave wouldn't let him. Calculations and scenarios played out in the strategy portion of his CPU, equations calculating the variables in numerous ways with the available options. He had to save Calabi-Yau now when he had a chance or he couldn't live with himself. Megatron was his enemy in this.

"Where the Queen is located, my lord?" he asked. Autobots were Megatron's enemies. Optimus Prime was Megatron's enemy.

"Until recently it was on Quintessa, in the hands of the Ruling Council, but three orns ago two fugitives captured it. According to my scouts they are headed towards Earth; a planet with sentient organic lifeform. Bring the Queen to me uncombined; humanity supports Autobots."

Iacon was midday city, but deep within Shockwave's den the world was cast in comforting shadows. Decepticons gad been programmed and sparked in the night, but now the understanding, sheltering darkness belonged to the Autobots and Fearswoop found the exchange lacking. The Day was order, inane, dull civil service and gilded towers, ignorant to the world philosophers in their high cities. The Night was silence, desire and passion, rest, violence and delightful, sweet action.

"I will select competent, trustworthy mechs for this mission," he promised, musing how well Shockwave fit the daylight. How had that sparkles drone created such a delightful creature as Calabi-Yau?

_My enemy's enemy is my friend, for now._

* * *

**I am Spessartine.**

* * *

AN: Hepatizon, also known as Black Corinthian Bronze, was a highly valuable metal alloy in classical antiquity. Molybdochalkos is an alloy of copper and lead. Spessartine or spessartite is manganese aluminium garnet, Mn3Al2(SiO4)3. Calabi-Yau manifolds are compact Kähler manifolds whose canonical bundle is trivial. It's got to do with the superstring theory.

The length of deca-cycle has not been specified in G1 cartoon as far as I know, but in IDW it is roughly three weeks: I use that here. Orn is a unit of undetermined duration. It is apparently defined as "one Cybertronian lunar day". I take it that it is the time that Cybertron's moons need to rotate around the planet.


	2. The cavalry is assertive but late

**The cavalry is assertive (but late)**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

Spike was standing in the backyard of his old house – the lawn needed mowing badly, it had been so long since he and dad had last been there – wearing white gloves and a white hat and veil. He had a feeling he was supposed to do something terribly important, but he had forgotten what it was. Why had he come there anyway?

**You came to see me. **The buzzing voice came right from next to him and Spike turned his head.

A woman was standing there, looking calmly at him. She had a long, graceful neck and an incredibly thin waist, so thin it made her look like a cartoon character, combined with broad loins and long legs. She was also made of tiny Insecticons that were in constant movement, making her body swarm and ripple in yellow and black and chrome hues. Spike remembered Insecticons and these seemed really obedient. He wondered how the woman made them stay and be parts of her so nicely.

**I am Spessartine.**

The veil was making it hard to see her so Spike lifted it with one hand. It was a beekeeper's veil; he remembered now how they had all been taken to a bee farm once in school, only three weeks before there had been that _incident _with the Stunticons and the principle had formally requested that the Autobot homeschooled him from that day on. There were rectangular wooden boxes littered on the childhood green grass all around them. He could hear susurrating sound that made his whole body buzz, bones and eyeballs and all. He could smell the grass like it had been just mown, but also hot metal, coolant and almost acidic energon which reminded him of the medbay after a battle when Ratchet had been welding wounds shut.

"Why are you here?" he asked Spessartine. He was feeling more and more uneasy every moment: this was plain wrong! Insecticons weren't that small and even if they were wouldn't this make Spessartine an Insecticon too?

**I'm here because Hepatizon didn't betray me after all. She is a friend of mine, the one who joined us. I have never joined with a sentient one before, but I can see why she would have chosen the Prime's friend.**

Their surroundings were paling out of existence and he couldn't see her anymore. Spike felt like he was paling out of existence, or like there wasn't really any flesh between her and… him and Spessartine. What do you mean, joined? What happened to me? He was lost within milky mists and he was scared.

**Don't worry. **Calming words whispering over his skin, stroking him like he was a skittish cat. **This metaphor aside,** **I am more of a wasp than a bee; a carnivorous creature. Tell them take us to Cybertron and I will collect my hivebody. **Uneasiness coming through; she didn't want to, she was afraid for some reason, but she feared something more. She feared death.

"What are you?" he whispered hoarsely. "What do you mean, joined?" He wasn't going to give up on that! He needed the explanation!

A muted golden and orange shape with black highlights materialized from the whiteness. It was a polyhedron with lots and lots of flat faces that reminded him of honeycombs, with black areas patching up where the lines didn't match. There were cords and things dangling from it like proboscises. One of them reached to brush against his cheek and like a bird bewitched in front of a snake Spike could only let her. It was so tender, almost hesitant.

**I am Spessartine.**

Spike's eyes opened and he shot up, nearly choking on thin air. His field of vision was spinning nauseatingly and red and yellow lights exploded in his eyes. He moaned, closed his eyes tightly and counted to ten before opening them again.

Everything was huge around him, huge and metallic and comforting just like it should. A dream, it was just a dream! But now he remembered playing with Bumblebee out in the desert, the attack and the strange femme nabbing him and touching his head. He lifted his hand, but there was movement so quick all he could see was red and white blur and then Ratchet's face loomed over him. Spike yelped, startled, and his hand dropped to his side.

"Lie back down. You aren't going anywhere before I clear you," Ratchet ordered. It was strange being on the receiving end of Ratchet's berthside manners when he was usually the assisting medic, Spike thought and leaned backwards, feeling oddly numb all over. Tired too and his eyes were sliding shut when his neck came in contact with the berth, but his head didn't.

There was some kind of neck rest under him and he stared helplessly at the orange ceiling, then turning his head carefully to look at Ratchet.

"What happened to me, Ratchet? Why this?" he asked and gestured awkwardly towards his head. Autobots didn't have that many facial "muscles" and their body language said much more than their expressions, but now Spike could have sworn that Ratchet's mouth attempted a grimace.

"How are you feeling?" Suppressed distress seemed to lace the gruff mech's voice and Spike felt a shiver run down his spine. He had seen and at times helped Ratchet repair and rebuild just about everything from finger joints to limbs on to one unforgettable time spark chamber support conduits for Sunstreaker after jet judo gone bad, but he had never heard his friend sound helpless like this. It was unsettling and he felt his stomach drop, feeling guilty though for what he wasn't sure.

"Hey, I'm alright, Doc-bot." That he was lying through his teeth went unsaid. After all, his world wasn't done spinning like a carousel gone crazy, with blinking, colourful lights and everything.

"You had the misfortune to meet Quintessons; the one who got to you is apparently named Hepatizon." Ratchet continued his explanation, but Spike didn't listen to it, though if pressed he would have said he heard Prowl's name there somewhere. It didn't matter. It didn't even matter that he had no idea what Quintesson meant. Nothing mattered but that one name that had turned his heart ice.

Just a dream? _I'm here because Hepatizon didn't betray me after all_. His heart was pounding painfully hard and his palms were clammy with sweat. Now he wasn't okay at all anymore, because _I have never joined with a sentient one before, but I can see why she would have chosen the Prime's friend._

"What did she _do _to me?" he demanded with a hoarse voice. Ratchet sighed and looked all of a sudden very tired and frustrated.

"There isn't really easy way to tell this, is there? But oh no, they want to hear it straight away and then they panic and it's my fault for not being a fragging therapist," he monologued. "The Quints claim they were trying to save the life of a friend, but Unicron will come before I believe that one! They had a mechanical, sentient life form of unknown species that lives in symbiosis with organic life forms. Prowl hasn't briefed me yet on finer details. Its previous host had died and they brought it to Earth _for protection_. I take it they stole the poor thing from someone." Spike swallowed and licked his dry lips. For all Ratchet said he couldn't be sensitive he was certainly trying: he hadn't said it.

In fact, Ratchet was standing in the rigid way that he had learned to translate as "do/ask away even though I don't want to answer", which was a bit different from "I don't want to know" and "I don't want to talk about it". The chevron on the medic's forehead cast a shadow on his face, making him look in Spike's still blurry eyes like he had a moustache.

Wasn't it funny he noticed things like that? Everything seemed to move in slow motion, even time, like through thick syrup.

"Spessartine," he whispered and now he touched it. Her. Whatever. His hand was shaking so bad he barely hit it with his fingers. He knew what it was supposed to look like and it sure felt angular and awkward. "Golden and orange and black. It's an Insecticon," he whispered and Ratchet's who body twitched like he had almost spontaneously transformed. Spike felt like he should faint now, he wanted to faint and wake up when everything was better so he closed his eyes and hoped, but his obnoxious body betrayed him. His mind wouldn't shut down!

"And it's a femme!" he groaned.

That was the icing on a spoiled cupcake. Spike liked women – what was there not to like? – and respected them because only a fool would think having breasts impaired brains somehow, but he wasn't so fond of women he wanted to have womanbits shoved into his brain. If God wanted humans to become hermaphrodites he would have made them so, period.

His body was now tight and stiff with tension that seemed to seep from his head downwards, and he felt out of place, out of _order_, _out of humanity_, and he seriously doubted that he'd ever reach the point that he'd be unaware of it before this got fixed. And what would Carly think of this? It had been one thing with the X-protoform, even if that had ended terribly he had still been the same person. But to have stray con brain inserted into his was simply beyond gross, like something that had escaped from the Island of Doctor Moreau. A bit of this, a bit of that, nothing whole.

"Get this out of my head!" he demanded. Ratchet nodded solemnly.

"We need more information to not risk your death, but I will get to testing once the initial interrogation is over." And maybe Spike was just being paranoid, but he noticed how Ratchet didn't promise to take it off.

* * *

They were interrogating the Quintessons in a brig. The more Cybertronian-looking one, a mech who had translated his name as Molybdochalkos, stood against the far wall of the brig in a beam of harsh yellow light that illuminated him and left the rest of the brig in shadows. Prowl was standing directly in front of Molybdochalkos, his back to the door, and the hulking forms of deep red and golden warbuilts stood on either side of the prisoner.

Optimus Prime was sitting behind the one-way mirror, looking at the Quintesson mech sitting under Sunstreaker and Sideswipe's target locks, answering patiently to the same questions Prowl asked again and again the same way again and again, exactly like the femme had. The whole affair had a bizarre feeling to him.

Rarely had he attended interrogations where the interrogated was so eager to share everything they knew and was asked, even volunteering blithely information. It had happened a few times with few mechs bound and determined to defect, but it was far from the normal, for any given value normal had in Ark. That wasn't the most confounding of it, however. It was who they were dealing with that filled his spark with both disbelief and dread.

The cold and emotionless race of aliens that had created two lines of sentient robots on Cybertron: a line of robots designed for domestic duties and labor, the Autobots, and the warbuilt Decepticons. The exceptionally cruel creators Cybertronians had eventually rebelled against, led by Alpha Trion. They had disappeared from Cybertron and from Cybertronian history, after so many thousands of vorns they had been believed to have disappeared forever. And now two of them were in Ark, had surrendered to his soldiers after installing a sentient symbiote into the brain of one of them, without consent asked or given. He couldn't help but think: this was supposed to never be again.

"Why did you choose Spike Witwicky?" Prowl asked. It was fourth time, but the one called Molybdochalkos didn't appear particularly harried.

"We needed a host someone powerful enough to challenge Inquirata would protect." Molybdochalkos sent a bit of old trinary code. Roughly it translated to the old human proverb of enemy's enemy being a friend. Optimus' blue optics dimmed briefly and then shone blue-white. No Decepticon had done to Spike Witwicky what these people had done, these monsters of old tales.

"Why did you care for the fate of the one you call Spessartine?" Prowl's voice was cold and suspicious.

"She is a friend of Hepatizon. That is all I need to know." Molybdochalkos had acted very subservient to junior undersecretary Hepatizon the whole time the Autobots had had chance to observe them and he acted completely disregarding of the fact the femme risked his life for someone he barely knew.

"Why do you expect us to accept your defection? You have physically attacked and mentally violated one of us."

A memory subroutine replayed a clip of Bumblebee holding the small, limp body of Spike. Deep violet in UV light, except for the metallic lump attached into his head that shone in fluorescent red and green and golden and turquoise, red in IR spectrum rather than healthy yellow except for the white-golden lines leaving the cool violet shell of the parasite, going deep into the boy's skull. [sickening worry] Alien mech and femme transmitting non-aggression signal, a pile of alien auxiliary weapons half a mile behind their backs. The femme had tentacles and a head much too huge when compared to the rest of her body for her to transform into anything and the first thing that came to his mind was not a history file of Quintessons, but a picture of fictitious monsters of human tales called Old Ones.

Bumblebee transmitting Spike's medical data to Ratchet, his very posture a picture of fear and despair.

"Because you will need our expertise to keep your human alive. Joining of organic and mechanic beings isn't an uncomplicated issue. His body will reject her and be destroyed in the process if we don't treat him." And Optimus was back to the cell, back to observing the questioning of the chrome and pale green mech.

"Spessartine would also be dead by that logic." But that was a deadlock, one that had been pointed out too many times already.

"She has survived the death of one host already. We would still have a chance to save her, but Witwicky would be dead for good." Molybdochalkos' expression was mild as coolant, his words repeated in pleasantly neutral tone. In short the Quintessons were extremely helpful, suspiciously so, about everything except Spike and Spessartine of whom they hadn't even revealed her species.

Optimus wanted to believe the best of people. He wanted to believe that Hepatizon truly loved her friend this much, that Molybdochalkos was earnest in his obvious, if unvoiced, love for her. But they were Quintessons. And even if they hadn't been he knew this trespassing wasn't his to forgive, and as guilty as it made him feel to admit it he was relieved. For this once he didn't want to be the one obligated to somehow balance between his duty and his programming; ever-understanding, ever-merciful, forever giving the second chance.

"Is this truly so bad a state of things to you?" Molybdochalkos asked. "We have offered technology previously unknown to you and none of you have yet even asked what it is that Spessartine can offer you. Allowing us to help you will further your war efforts considerably."

They had given much. Blueprints of factory installations, schemes for new weapons, tactical data on Decepticons up to and including battle plans, access codes, weapon information and the location of several Spacebridge units. Optimus Prime wasn't sure how they had gotten their hands on all this; surely there had been no time to spy on the Decepticons only for this negotiation's sake, which implied the Quintessons had been keeping an optic on them for quite some time.

Which meant that this Inquirata could do as much damage to them if he was so minded. It wouldn't take a scientific genius to realize that collaborating with the Decepticons would be an efficient countermove.

* * *

Spike wished he could just sleep, but again his body betrayed him: he was depressingly alert if not exactly perky. He could hear the hum of the medbay's hardware, the faint draft from the air-conditioning and his own breathing. The bay was dim, lights blue and calming, and while Spike had a book and a small berthside lamp he was lulled into annoying mood where he was bored and too distracted to do anything about it at the same time.

"This has got to be the most boring peril I have ever been in," he declared out loud. He was scared, yes, but he was also bored and that made the fear worse. He had entirely too much time to think.

(What if Spessartine could take him over when he slept? It was an Insecticon, they were on Megatron's side. Hadn't the nightmare with X been enough? Why couldn't something happen and end the waiting? Why Ratchet was so long gone?)

The hiss of the ward's sterilization passage compelled him to sit up, hoping that it was Ratchet preferably returning with Optimus Prime or at least Prowl or Jazz. Anyone authorized to divulge classified information, since he was pretty sure that whatever the Quintessons had revealed was classified; they had made Ratchet very twitchy and anything that could do that was surely a bad thing.

But it was something even better than Ratchet. The door slid open to reveal Bummblebee sneaking quickly inside and keying it immediately shut again, holding Carly to his chest with one arm. Now she will know, a panicked thought rushed into his mind as Carly looked around the medbay, her face relaxing as she saw him wave at her. Maybe she already knows, he thought then. He had Carly, father and Bumblebee all written as his next of kin so Ratchet might have told them. Then again, it wasn't like he wasn't conscious so maybe not.

Bumblebee skittered hastily to the side of the Nightingale Berth, as it had been christened by his father, where Ratchet had years ago put together a field hospital and put Carly down. She was only dressed in white and blue striped pajamas, a pale green dressing gown put over it, and her hair was tousled. It had to be night, Spike realized, either night still or the next night, in which case he had been out cold longer than he had realized.

"Thank Primus you are awake!" Carly cried out and skirted deftly around the anaesthetic machine to drop on her knees beside him.

"Don't try to sit up," Bumblebee ordered with tone that eerily reminded Spike of Ratchet. He smiled as warmly as he could at the corn-haired woman and the corn-hued bot, his heart already going half a beat too fast. Carly took his hand and he clutched at it with both of hers without really noticing. Bumblebee hovered over them both, pressing one finger gently against his other hand and for a second it was easy to go on again.

"Thank you," he said and his voice wasn't as steady as he would have liked, but luckily Carly only nodded. It felt good to see her, crouching next to him solid and familiar and there.

He wondered how much Carly and Bumblebee had been told of his… condition. He didn't mind them knowing, he wanted them to understand, but he really, really didn't want to be the one to put it in words.

"Y-you scared us, dummy." Carly's grip on his hand tightened briefly, causing heat to creep up his cheeks. "I smuggled something in for you." She pulled her right hand away from Spike's and reached into her bag, bringing out the small music player Wheeljack had modified for them. There were five hundred songs somehow recorded into it, no cassettes required or anything, and it hadn't even exploded when Spike had turned gingerly it on the first time. His face lit up with joy.

"You brought me music! I adore you utterly." Carly put the small piece of tech next to his mattress on the berth and Spike gave it a grateful look as if it were some sacred treasure.

After Ratchet had left the medbay had been dreadfully quiet and Spike had been afraid that in the silence of his thoughts he might hear a buzzing voice at any moment. He had tried to _not _listen, but his attention circled back to the lump in his head, the voice in his dream, again and again until he had tried to sing in his desperation. But it had sounded silly in the quiet medbay and his voice had died down. Spike turned his head to look Bumblebee in the optics.

"How did you get by Ratchet anyway? I can see how Carly could have snuck past him, but even you aren't that good. Did Wheeljack reverse-engineer Mirage's photon disruptor for you?" He entertained the thought of invisible Bumblebee sneaking behind Ratchet's back and found it pretty amusing. "Please tell him not give Sideswipe one," he jested.

"The horror! I need to wipe my processor! Seriously, we got Sideswipe and Smokescreen to run distraction for us." He rattled amusedly. "The isolated ward really is soundproofed well, isn't it?"

"Yeah, and no unauthorized visitors are allowed in either." Carly gave that beautiful smile that made his insides go wobbly so he raised his hands to take a hold of her shoulders and dragged her down. Carly fell easily on him, nuzzling her face against his, smelling like fabric softener and faint whisper of coolant and motor oil and much of herself, the unique scent that was Carly.

"So thanks," he whispered into her mouth.

It was a sweet moment, the eye of the storm, and as surely as the storm will wash over you again the moment passed when the chamber hissed again and the door slid open.

"What are you two doing here?" a familiar voice snapped and Carly's head shot up, leaving Spike stare after her, blinking.

Ratchet was marching towards them like an avenging angel, if one could picture avenging angel of steel, in white and sort of pinkish red. Ratchet called it mauve and Carly agreed with him, but to Spike pink was pink and Ratchet really was more impressive in pink than anybot had any right to be.

Then again, energon, the Cybertronian blood/food – which was kind of vampiric now when he thought about it – and energon was electric pink, so maybe pink was really fierce and powerful colour for his friend, like blood red was for humans.

Optimus Prime walked in after the medic, kind and reassuring. His mere presence inspired hope and determination as always. Spike still didn't know if it was the Matrix that could affect even humans like that or if it was just Optimus, but he always forgot what it felt like until he was actually distressed.

The painful knot inside him he had been able to ignore thanks to Carly and Bumblebee seemed to unwind, leaving him trusting and relaxed. Optimus was there now so of course it would be all right somehow. He reveled so in this feeling he almost missed the beginning of the infamous Hatchet Rant.

"What do you think you are doing, sneaking in here when you knew nothing of Spike's condition? How many times must I tell you people that when I restrict access to a mech it is for a reason and it isn't to annoy you fraggers! Slagging sparklings that wouldn't recognize an active safety subroutine if it kicked their afts. Spike's condition is something completely new to us, we don't know what might make it worse or even endanger his life and you sneak in uncaring of possibly contaminating him…" Ratchet's voice wasn't actually all that loud, but it was high and seemed to make even Spike's teeth vibrate. He almost apologized out of reflex, even when he wasn't the one Ratchet was mad at, but Carly obviously wasn't feeling that meek.

"And now you are going to listen to me, you son of a glitching laptop and a toaster oven! That!" and she pointed dramatically at Spike, "Is _my _one true love who has had something freaky inserted into his head that nobody will tell us anything about! Do you have any idea how worried I have been? Or Sparkplug or Bumblebee? If you showed the common sense God gave to a lemming on drugs maybe we wouldn't have had to sneak inside!" She was standing her ground firmly, her hand on her hips and her chin high.

She was utterly stunning. Bumblebee whistled appreciatively and Spike just knew where he was coming from: not attraction, but sheer respect.

"She has a point, you know. Sharing information is a good thing," Sparkplug's voice admonished from somewhere below the berth and Spike's eyes widened. He hadn't noticed the door opening this time. And Ratchet had actually quieted. Spike couldn't even remember the last time that had happened, didn't know if it had happened in is species' lifetime.

"'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male." It was Ratchet. Optimus static-laughed as he bent down to lift Sparkplug next to him. Spike wasn't sure what it was that Ratchet was quoting, but he agreed readily. Carly was impressive.

And there was a picture of a woman made of Insecticons in his head, but he ignored it.

"All too true," Prime said with an air of fondness and Spike wondered if he was maybe thinking about Elita 1.

"And Bumblebee counts, too. He's kind of an honorary woman," he jested, making his friend hung his head and trill in embarrassment. Bumblebee was one of those familiar enough with Earth cultures to know why he was being teased about it.

In the end Ratchet threw Bumblebee off the medbay, but he let Carly and Sparkplug camp beside Spike on the condition that they wouldn't keep Spike awake. Despite their best attempt to stay awake both of them fell asleep sometime after midnight, but it was already near six when Spike eventually slid back into sleep. He was so afraid he would hear the voice again, see the strange waspcon woman, but he only dreamed of working in the oil ring for summer again, except it strangely resembled the lower levels of the Ark. When he woke up it was still blessedly silent in his head.

Face it like a grown-up. When are you going to own up that you are going to have to hear her for a long time to come.

* * *

"There is no better scourge than love. For love mechs will do impossible things, strive to overturn Matrix and Pit, to lie and betray, desert and kill. For love you laugh, cry, adore, self-destruct and suffer. Where there is love there is nothing you can't make a mech do."

* * *

AN: I would like to defend labeling the Quintessons as _chaotic _evil. According to the transformers wiki, and this is a direct quote: In 2005, they were shown to capture prisoners for trial and feeding to their army of Sharkticons. The mock trials held by the Quintesson Court seemed to have no purpose at all (except maybe for the Quintessons' amusement), as defendants were still immediately fed to the ravenous Sharkticons even when the Judge determined them to be innocent.

On scale from lawful to chaotic that's pretty chaotic in my opinion, court window dressings aside.

Ratchet is quoting Female of the Species by Rudyard Kipling


	3. Codependency

**Co-dependency**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

It took three days before Ratchet excused Spike from the Nightingale berth. Not because there was much physically wrong with him, other than the fact that he was now an _Insecticon hybrid_, but because Ratchet felt like there should have been more repercussions than the joint pain and fatigue he was suffering from, especially with the Quintessons' unnerving claims. It turned out he let Spike go too early; the next day he collapsed in the middle of a step. That was when they found out why Hepatizon had claimed they needed her to keep Spike alive.

To try avoiding iron was a little like trying to avoid oxygen, there was simply much of it in the world. It was the second most common mineral on Earth and necessary for all animal and plant life. Most of the time human body would maintain a fine balance between our daily need for iron and the amount that is absorbed from the food, but Spessartine and her needs threw that balance off the whack.

Spike didn't remember fainting, but he did remember waking up. First there had been nothing but blackness, paling little by little into lighter and lighter greyness, and then the colourful lights came. They rushed by like in some kind of video game, streaks of blue, yellow, brownish-golden, white and electric pink, spiralling like the picture of DNA in his biology book. Little yellow and black stars popped up and exploded in his eyes and then there was Ratchet's looming figure and booming voice.

Now his father was sitting beside him, his damp hand holding tightly his and his smile wavering. Carly and Bumblebee had both been driven off again despite their protests. Spike smiled to his father.

"I don't feel all that bad, you know?" he tried to reassure him, but he had a feeling it wasn't working too well. It was the truth, though.

**I'm sorry. This problem didn't occur on the planet my species originated from, but I have noticed that most organics are more fragile than that. **

"You will get better," father promised him and Spike nodded. He didn't think he was going to, but he didn't fel like arguing about it. He wondered when his father had gotten those gray streaks in his hair and wrinkles around his eyes and why he hadn't noticed before. Sparkplug's eyes were flat and pale as he comforted his son.

Again the medbay, this time of day bright and loud. Spike didn't feel all that horrible right now, actually, only terribly tired. And the voice had returned. He had a feeling that if he closed his eyes he would see her standing there beside him, in yellow and orange and black gown, with inhumane, thin waist, or maybe sectioned tentacles like whips grabbing his hands. He forced his eyes stay open.

_The human body needs iron for oxygen transport_. Spike was so scared because he knew for a fact that Ratchet hadn't said that out loud. He knew that it hadn't even been English! _Oxygen is required for the production and survival of all cells in human bodies. Iron is such an essential element of human life, in fact, that they have no physiologic regulatory mechanism for excreting iron. Humans prevent iron overload solely by regulating iron absorption, but Spessartine has intervened with this ability._ Ratchet's speech was a little off. Maybe… it was some of the sentence structures? And it was somehow very precise and hard-hard-sounding, like the tic toc of a clock. But it was hard to think about it like that because it sounded just like...

_Usually it would take years for the iron overload to get this bad. _Spike was studying French, as part of his normal High School education, even if he hadn't put a foot inside the building in the whole last year, and he remembered when he had first realized he could think in French. He was so scared he though he might throw up because this was what Cybertronian would sound if he had been speaking it from birth. _Of course there is a medicine for it: deferoxamine, an iron chelating drug. I have given it to him, repeatedly, and it isn't working_. He was pretty sure he wasn't dying right now, but he was feeling shitty and he was thinking in Cybertronian, or at least listening to other people doing it. And now he knew that the person speaking was Optimus Prime. He had never heard the inside-the-head voice before but it was like there was a name tag on it.

**There is, in a way.**

_Bring Hepatizon to the medbay. _And Spike just knew that was sent to Prowl, Windcharger and Red Alert. His eyes slipped shut. There was a serious face just behind his eyelids.

* * *

The dusk-dim sky spread endlessly above Acid Storm and with it came the sensation of freedom, of having no limits. There was nowhere he couldn't go and no one that could outrun him. Not even his trine mates. The last rays of the sunfall behind him painted their wings in all possible shades of red and crimson and in front of them was the nightfall. He enjoyed the display.

"A good orn to exert ourselves. About time Shockwave let us out again!" Oxidation screamed over the rumble of their engines, performing aileron rolls again and again until he was but a madly spinning blue blur in Acid Storm's optics. Green, blue and golden streaks on the sky, bold enough, invincible enough to not need camouflage, they were making a statement.

_Isn't there enticing smell in the air? _he asked, his spark million light years away. _The scent of energon and the stench of hot metal. _He could recall it by molecule-level details, coolant and hotness of melting metal and energy like slap to the face. He hadn't been warbuilt, created too many megavorns after the Beast Wars, but his reprogramming had taken well.

What Starscream's trine was to Megatron the Rainmakers were to Shockwave: the seekers of their respective planets of operations. There were many lesser trines of course, but those two were the most feared among their enemies, most destructive in any battle. Ironically enough, Acid Storm thought as he soared high over Rad Zone, the twilight no-mech's land too contaminated by neutronic fallout for either side to settle in permanently, leaders of both trines were traitorous. Where Starscream's attempt to usurp Megatron were so infamous the betting pool wasn't about if or when, but about how this time, Acid Storm kept his silence about his activities.

More ironic still, out of the two of them Acid Storm, who was known as the loyal one, was the one to commit real treason rather than factory-variety mutiny.

Then he cut the engines and let himself drop in freefall as he turned as he soared over the plain where he knew the Autobots' mining crew to be, where he knew them to hide in their tunnels at this precise time. There was little water on Cybertron, but hydrogen and oxygen in abundance – as well as nitrogen. He activated his laboratory components, creating H2O and HNO3, mixing them and spreading the pressurized acidic water into the air. Still-hot engines kicked back a moment later with a shattering roar and pushed him deeper towards the Night.

He had been to the Midnight once, the Dead End Valley, the one place on Cybertron where the protometal, thick and slow, quicksilver-shining, smelling like life, slowly flowed to the surface from under the planet's exosurface. Once the dimmest slum on the planet, now it was the most energon-rich area. He had been a prisoner, but he had been well fed.

_Fragging Autoslag are hiding! But this storm won't be over anytime soon! _Derecho sent to his trine mates. His function was his name; to create a terrible storm and spread the acid rain far and wide.

Acid Storm acknowledged him with a ping and flew on until he reached his mark: an exosurface formation shaped like a bit crooked pentagon. Over it he dropped a small acid pellet, emptied from its load and carrying a single chip instead. Dull silvery glint, it plummeted towards the ground where one of Elita 1's femmes would pick it up. That precious little chip carried all information Acid Storm had of Fearswoop's mission.

Elita 1 hated him and the feeling was reciprocated from the centre of his spark, but Elita 1 needed his information and he needed to follow her. They made do.

_Where are you where are you where are you?" _Oxidation was sing-songing. The little, sharp spinning manoeuvres he was doing, spreading his own acid rain into the atmosphere, were one big tease and he knew without bothering to look that his other trine mate was getting revved up. All Acid Storm could muster was dull distaste as tiny drops of their own acid rain pelted his wings, stirring his HUD.

Twice he had fallen in love and neither time had it been with a person. His first love had been the Decepticon idealogy, the glorious destiny of their race to rule an empire which would span the universe. But what had that lover brought him except despair? A broken homeworld and their race in shambles, facing the threat of extinction. Unicron didn't know fury like a spurned lover and so had come Acid Storm's second love.

That was the Prime and he had yet to be disillusioned this time. Not Optimus Prime, but the idea of a Prime. The holder of the Matrix of Leadership, the host of the holy essence of Primus, hallowed shell only filled with great things. Acid Storm knew he could never love a flawed person. His love had to be utterly perfect and for his love he stayed and spied and betrayed, reveling in the knowledge that those worth less than the Prime had ordered him to do so.

The perfection, surely, would have allowed him to join him on Earth. But how sweet it was to sacrifice when it was not required!

* * *

The energon in their cubes was of far superior quality to anything they would be entitled to on Quintessa, but as it was the only kind on Endless Grace of Scientific Enquiry Inquirata had to allow them to consume it or starve. It was so pale it was almost white and the mere smell of it had sent them reeling the first time they had ingested it like they had been hit. When it hit their system it was like being filled with light. In their cups it lit the room with bright light as they carefully sipped it. Even the cockpit, the most utilitarian part of the yacht, was luxorious. The seats molded to the shape of their body, the light was pleasant ultraviolet neutral and the walls were softly curved, muted green, the acoustics simply perfect.

"It's not our business what he was thinking," the one with black-striped tentacles muttered. "And he gives me the alarms. He's not right in the head, that one." He didn't have hands, but he made a fairly good impression of a thumb by looping the end of his 3L upper body tentacle and pointing with it towards the lounge.

"None of us are right in the head," the shorter one pointed out. His tentacles had green stripes and they were rather dented.

"Yeah, but that's just normal. Most of us are just plain normal insane," said the taller one. "We're not _glitches_. He's worse than an organic and he smiles all the time. Someone should do something about him." He lowered his voice to sub-sonic range now, just in case. All high-castes, both the judges and the scientists, were dangerous, but there was dangerous and there was dangerous and there was a difference.

"He does his job," the shorter one pointed out. The Ruling Court wasn't going to lift a finger and only they had the bearings to face Inquirata. He stared blankly at the window, swinging the basket.

"What is he waiting for, anyway?" he said. "This is the time, isn't it? He said we are to enter the atmosphere at dawn." There were no windows because window in a space ship was too bad idea to express with words, but they were both uplinked into the ship's sensors and they could observe the planet lazily turning towards day under them. The light caught the edge of deep blue sea, painting the horizon strip burnt red. One could imagine radiation halo, a terrible tragedy.

The door to the lounge retracted to the frame in curvy strips in front of them. Inquirata stood in the doorway, blinking amiably in the sunlight until he saw the two strangers. He smiled. It was a deep joyful smile, a terribly joyful smile. It reached his optics, where it split into a horrible cracked brilliance, like light on the shards of a broken mirror. He was a striking mech, his head huge and with five purple ridges, his optics surrounded by huge, elegantly curved sensory panels, his tentacles thin and delicate and adorned with nanites that created endless slideshow of glowing glyphs on them. They would have rather looked at Cybetronian or even an organic than him. They sent kowtow to him, Principality Inquirata.

"Why, Abatis and Caponier, please let us commence with our plan," he said with a sophisticated voice. His vowels were beautifully, smoothly, sharply rounded; he could have cut silksteel mesh with his enunciation.

"I have received most amusing intel from our Cybertron Intelligence sect. There is no better scourge than love. For love mechs will do impossible things, strive to overturn Matrix and Pit, to lie and betray, desert and kill. For love you laugh, cry, adore, self-destruct and suffer. Where there is love there is nothing you can't make a mech do." Inquirata smiled indulgently once more and sent them a line.

It read: _In all manifestations of mirror symmetry found so far a central role is played by the fact that in a d-dimensional quantum field theory a differential p-form potential admits a dual formulation as a (d-p-2)-form potential._

Abatis looked at Caponier who gyrated all his six shoulders. They were merely security. If Principality Inquirata happened to find mirror symmetry and toric Calabi-Yau manifolds romantic it wasn't their business; and there were those with stranger fetishes. The very femme they were searching for came to mind.

* * *

Ratchet, next only to Primus when in his medbay, glared at the group of mechs around the human berth. He was probably itching to kick them all off, but procedure demanded that Red Alert oversaw the operation their prisoner was going to carry out and common sense demanded for guards. Sparkplug had been sent away, at Red Alert's insistence, but for once Optimus had not been reluctant to adhere to his strict views of protocol.

Optimus Prime watched over Hepatizon who hovered over Spike Witwicky, supporting his head with careful hands and extending two tentacles. One curled behind Spike's head to touch the Insecticon symbiote [no, parasite: unwanted, harmful, if with some potential] while the other reached for the inner side of the human's left elbow. Two transparent, blunt, closed tubes extended from the tip of it, immediately blurring into almost invisibility and sinking promptly into the human's flesh.

She had a phase generator, Optimus realised. It was basic science: all matter was mostly empty space between atoms and molecules. Phase generators made atoms of an equipment vibrate at such a rate that his matter could pass through other solid matter. Problem with it was, when the generator was turned off, the matter of the equipment was mixed with foreign matter, usually gases, which very quickly weakened it_._ Phase equipments were very difficult and expensive to make and there was no way to make them last.

Windcharger and Tracks were standing as guards on her both sides. Hepatizon was rather small when compared to then and their bright colours, blue and white, red and white, diminished her more muted colour scheme. Spike, looking tiny and truly diminished by them all, had passed out, his skin tinted with unhealthy-looking pallour, and if there was anything to feel grateful for it was that his human friend wasn't awake to suffer through the surely painful procedure.

"There. He is good as new for five days now," Hepatizon said and retracted her tubes, ceasing the vibrations once they were out. There was the slightest tint of some blue liquid on one, the other didn't look any different it had when going in. The tentacle that had treated Spessartine-part didn't have tubes, but one needle and one round metal violet object Optimus didn't recognize.

"Only for five days?" He wasn't happy with that. At all.

"Well, he isn't going to drop dead immediately after, humans can live with iron overload, but he will risk a stroke and his functionality will begin to decline again. With careful monitoring of his diet you should be able to add two days to that."

"And removing all excess iron from the food he consumes wouldn't solve the problem?" Ratchet asked testily. Hepatizon seemed to wilt for the duration of an astrosecond under the glare of the medic's optics, so bright with anger and frustration it was almost electric white, and Optimus felt some satisfaction that his grouchy CMO had managed to instill some healthy fear into their _uninvited guest. _

Willing prisoner, would-be-Autobot, as ludricious as that idea was. To be an Autobot was much more than only wearing the red sigil and taking orders from him. To be an Autobot was to adhere to their philosophy. Some did it better and some, well, not, and Sunstreaker could be used as an example of those bots. But he was far, far cry from Hepatizon. There were Decepticons who would make better Autobots as they were than the Quintesson politician.

"It would kill Spessartine and since she is joined with his brain there is over sixty percent chance Spike Witwicky would end up brain dead. I can not give you the exact estimate since I am not familiar with humans as species." Hepatizon's hissing voice was blithely unashamed. Optimus curse the fate that had seemed fit to tie them to this individual.

Windcharger growled at her words and Tracks put a restraining hand on his arm. With the screech of clean metal against clean metal Windchager slapped the offending hand off, but didn't attempt anything.

Planet Earth was very helpful when creating metaphors, he thought. You could tame a lion, but no power would make it herbivore. Hepatizon had shown some worry towards Molybdochalkos and much daring when it came to protecting Spessartine, but in the end she was very similar to what their annals told of the Quintessons: completely disregarding Spike's safety, well-being, mental inviolability and the social problems this was bound to cause among his people. Worst was that he had a feeling there might be a way to separate his human friend from the Insecticon, but he also knew that the hypothetical information would not be provided willingly.

How far would he be ready to go for information that might not exist? How could he not try his everything for Spike?

"And it is going to be like this for the rest of his life?" he asked instead. It was a... disconcerting and riling thought. For their race practically any damage could be fixed. This was not fair.

"As long as his flesh shell lives, yes. But he will live long after its death so it should even out," she answered.

"What do you mean?" The shadow of Autobot X was looming over the medbay, over this whole miserable affair as little as anyone desired to say those words out loud. He recalled a memory file: bot made of puzzle pieces, blue and red and yellow and green, one hand a gun, only one doorwing painted in blinding neon turquoise. A Quintesson monster, made of pieces and completely mad, and wasn't that appropriate comparison now?

"If you are going to collect Spessartine's hivebody from Cybertron, his mind will imprint on the thousands processors of the Insecticons. If he lives long enough for the process to be completed, he will live on after the death of his flesh shell. Though even the he will be tied to Spessartine." Hepatizon sent the latest specs she had of the Insecticon hive and a picture, not real but carefully constructed pixel by pixel until it might as well have been, of a mass of yellow, chrome and orange-black flying _other-mechs_ forming a swarm that took the vague shape of a human.

"Take her back," Optimus ordered and the guards were only too eager to obey. He waited until the door slid shut until he allowed his posture to slump. At the very edge of his field of vision Ratchet was sweeping datapads into neat tidy stacks. Only to mess them up again for the sake of looking like he was doing something, he guessed.

"Any input on this?" he pleaded.

"Other than the fact that there is nothing at all like this in any sort of medical records and we're essentially learning as we go along?" Ratchet asked dryly. All medic they had left had perfected the art of pit-black humour vorns ago.

They looked at each other, a young Prime, for the vorns in stasis didn't count, and an old medic, surrounded by the orange latticework of the medbay. They had profited much and they had lost something of great value. That was war, a game of give and take and lose, now on a new planet but essentially the same. He would ask Spike what he wished. It was his life, not Optimus'.

"We are not going to tell him of the Insecticon studies. This is going to be bad enough for him without having to re-evaluate his gender identity," Ratchet ordered and Optimus nodded sagely.

* * *

Cybertronians have no biological sex as they are no biological beings, but they do have something that has parallels with gender as "the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for certain type of person"; they have functions.

There are "females", those who create new sparks. There are neutrals, mechs, those who do not. They use masculine pronouns on Earth since being called an it is demeaning, but there is no "male" gender on Cybertron.

But Insecticons didn't originate on Cybertron, weren't created by Quintessons, and they have something that is called other-mechs in ancient High Autobot. Most of the hiveminds are femmes, but some are what might translate to "hermaphrodite" if one wasn't nitpicking about the existence of two sets of genitalia. Before the war broke out many xenomechanists had argued and theorized about how that was possible, how one Insecticon could copy and combine two personality matrixes to create an offspring. Optimus Prime would have preferred to not be the one to find out.

* * *

AN: Rainmakers are canon, but only Acid Storm was given a name. Derecho is a widespread and long-lived, violent convectively induced straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms in the form of a squall line usually taking the form of a bow echo.

Abatis is a term in field fortification for an obstacle formed of the branches of trees laid in a row, with the sharpened tops directed outwards. Caponier is a type of fortification structure.

(As a rule, if they have fancy names they are probably OCs or at least named by me.)


	4. But nobody wats to die

**But n****obody wants to die**

Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.

* * *

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. It was a quip meant to be funny that Spike had heard many times – it had been funny before. Now Spike was trying to wrap his brain over the concept of immortality.

Immortality was the negation of mortality, not dying, ever. Well, it wasn't that eternal deal what Spessartine was offering to him, at least according to the Quints, since he could be killed. He just wouldn't be growing old. Well, his body would do just that and die, and that was part of what felt so iffy to Spike. Would he really be transferred to Spessartine as a soul, or would his mind just be copied? And just how much worth it would it be to hang to the Insecticon forever? _But, _a small, base part of him kept piping, _I don't want to die! _

If he became immortal he would have to witnesses everyone he cared about dying around him. Exept most of them were Autobots nowadays, so it would just be dad and Carly… Bad enough! But they might die before him anyway, dad almost surely.

He remembered the video feed Optimus had shown him the day before. Windcharger and Tracks looming as guards over squid-like Hepatizon, their bright blue, white and red dimming her more muted colour scheme. Ratchet like some great, pink fury, Optimus towering over them all and in the middle of all this him, pale, passed out, tiny. Pitiful. Helpless.

_If __you are going to collect Spessartine's hivebody from Cybertron, his mind will imprint on the thousands processors of the Insecticons. If he lives long enough for the process to be completed, he will live on after the death of his flesh shell. Though even the he will be tied to Spessartine._

And that was the crux of it. Tied to Spessartine and probably unable to control his new body at all. All this supposing the Quints weren't just lying. Spike just had way too much time to think about pipe dreams and watch stupid, brain-rotting programs.

Sparkplug and Spike Witwicky were the Autobots' public relations liaisons and they doubled as field medics and general handymen, but their original job description had been to educate their new allies in all things human so they could function at least in the fringes of everyday human society and not commit any faux passes or accidental crimes. They had taught their friends that red light means stop and green light means go, that the speed limits are there for a reason, it isn't polite to ask a human why they aren't having sex when their body chemistry maximises the chances of pregnancy, why they get embarrassed and annoyed when Ratchet points the correct time out and that Hound can't have a pet puma because the law says so.

But of course the Autobots were interested in non-essential things also and Bumblebee shared a pretty common weakness for soap operas. The first ten minutes of watching a millennium-old relatively giant alien robot playing with TV had amused Spike. After three hours of shiny-opticked amazement it hadn't been so amusing anymore. Apparently Cybertron had lacked the whole genre altogether, which Spike would have taken as a sign of their greater intelligence if all Autobots starting from freaking Sunstreaker and ending with Optimus Prime himself hadn't been so taken with the little daydreams.

"It's time to go, or we are going to be late from the aerial show. Now let's go!" With that, Spike had grabbed Bumblebee's finger and attempted to drag him towards the rec room's door, ignoring the resulting whine of cooling fans, meant to imitate a sigh.

"But I wanted to see if Erica was really going to marry Mark. They aren't well suited for each other at all! Alex is a much better man for her, loving and not hiding a car accident where her step-uncle was crippled!" Bumblebee, scout extraordinaire, had whined.

"Oh, God above, please don't tell me you have gotten hooked on soap operas too. _Please_." Wincing, Spike had almost shoved him out the door, followed and shut it behind himself. Aeroplanes, he had thought, real aeroplanes that weren't red and purple and white and weren't going to shoot at them.

"But Alex loves her!"

_Somebody__ save me._

So he had thought and here he was, watching the very same series from the little telly father had brought him. Ratchet wasn't too keen to let him out of the medbay so soon again and to tell the truth Spike just wanted to avoid all the curious optics and well-meaning questions that would be sure to follow him like a storm cloud.

The signal of the little thing wasn't the greatest after it had to penetrate Ark's very formidable walls. On the flickering blue screen Blythe Summerfield had just found out that the illegitimate child she'd had with Mark Spencer had gotten switched at the hospital so she had been actually raising Erica's child. Whoopee-do! Who would have thought?

"I can feel my brains liquefying," he complained. He hadn't meant it like that, but he saw his father flinch from the corner of his eyes and flinched also. "Not like that, it's just…" He made a gesture towards the television and put a piece of carrot, healthy snack courtesy of Ratchet, to his mouth.

"Don't joke like that! Just don't," Sparkplug whispered and took Spike's hands to his own. Spike looked at him, but not to his eyes, uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he whispered back, acutely aware of the extra weight at the back of his head, the giant, pink elephant in the room that no one would discuss when he was there. Spessartine who was a probably evil Insecticon, Hepatizon and her cohort who were certainly evil, megalomaniac Quintessons and his dependence of them. Spike didn't remember when the lines on his father's face had become so deep and old-looking.

"You should be," Sparkplug said and grabbed him into a bear hug. Spike made comfortable circles with his arms against his father's back and regulated his breathing: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, hold your breath and count to three before releasing. Don't cry.

He shut off the telly, but that only resulted in an awkward conversation while Spike waited to become tired enough to sleep some more. He was used to a lot more physical activity than what Ratchet had allotted to him now.

He wasn't sure when it happened. He had lied down and closed his eyes and he didn't remember being tired, but it was like he dropped through some deep, dark well, like Alice to Wonderland, and the effect wasn't far from that either. Spike was standing in a deep metallic gorge. Most vibrant green vines were flowing down the dim grey sides, but when he looked closer he realized they weren't really vines at all, but some kind of crystal formations. He frowned and his vision _shifted, _now the crystalline leaves, no two completely similar among them, very smoky transparent, the again deep green, then with small reddish line traveled inside the smoky-colour and he realized that it was heat. He was seeing them in ultraviolet, visible spectrum and infrared.

The acoustics were great; chorus of deep female voices was singing a song that seemed to vibrate and echo its way right through his skull. The tune was obnoxiously bubbly and… he had no words.

**Call upon the seaponies when you're in distress! Helpful-as-can-be ponies, simply signal S.O.****S.!**

Spike wasn't going to admit under the pain of torture having ever watched My Little Ponies. He had been babysitting his cousin, it had been extenuating circumstances! It wasn't like he could have left Rebecca alone! He had been scarred for life!

He was standing alone in the gorge, defending himself from hypothetical accusations of total lack of dignity, and then he wasn't alone anymore. With a sound that seemed to fill the sky a swarm of Insecticons flew through the gorge, there seemed to be no end for them. _Shift _and they were humans in strange striped uniforms, turning to salute him as they marched by, _shift _and they were wearing shining armour like knights of old, carrying battle flags with golden and black wasp crests. Rhythmic drumming accompanied the marching and the woman voices.

**Sh****oop be do, shoop shoop be do! Are you sinking fast? Had some nasty shocks?**

And Spike wasn't in the gorge anymore. Now he was standing in a strange rainforests where huge, crooked trees hosted what looked like dry-land oysters and sponges, which turned out to be metallic when he looked closer, copper-marble in colour. Somebody with soft breasts draped her arms around him from behind and with explosion and huge roar of many engines all Pit was unleashed. War bellowed around them, blazing in scarlet and energon-pink battalions of mechs Spike couldn't recognize as either Autobots or Decepticons, and a horde of Insecticon swarms, millions of bodies closing ranks around organic beasts of all kinds.

"What war is this?" he asked and turned his head to look at the woman holding him.

**My kind calls it the War of Wrath. Cybertronians know it as the Beast War or Predacon War.**

**Count upon** **th****e seaponies! They'll see you get help!**

"Seaponies?" he asked. He tried to elucidate, but the words still wouldn't come. The rainforest was in fire around them, but he couldn't feel any heat.

**Don't blame me. That part comes from your subconscious.**

"Well, I do associate the song with unspeakable evil," he muttered sarcastically. Spessartine abandoned hugging him in favour of turning him around and holding his chin with a firm hand, making him look into her eyes, except she didn't have eyes, but bright red optics. They made her face look like a fine porcelain doll's that had had ragdoll's button eyes sown into it.

**Am I truly so repulsive to you?**

"This is my mind, not a commune! You have no business being here!" Spike shouted and managed to turn his head.

**I understand why you are upset, but please understand, this isn't easy for me either. Always before I have been the master of my mind, now I tag along with someone who detests me. Neither of us is going to get out of this arrangement so we should make the best of it.**

That made sense. Spike didn't want to see it like that because it was still his mind, not a commune, and if he started feeling bad for Spessartine then the next thing he knew he was probably going to feel bad for Starscream when Megatron began to bellow to him at top of his non-existent lungs for something he wasn't to blame for and that was a creepy thought. He was in no way obligated to be understanding about anything now.

"What do you mean?" he asked sullenly. Because there was no reason to make it more painful than it already was and Spessartine…

Spessartine felt like father, like Bumblebee, and Spike would forgive them for anything. Surely he could forgive Spessartine for being friends with Hepatizon? She was home.

Home? He was feeling dizzy, it was hard to think. Thought were like multicoloured jewel-like birds flying through his skull. Little, pretty hummingbirds.

**Let's negotiate.**

And later Spike woke up. He didn't remember agreeing upon anything, didn't remember even discussing any conditions, but somehow the strange weight in his mind felt more settled sat gingerly, trying to regain the use of his limbs again, and looked at the anaesthetic machine. He could see his reflection from its mirror-shiny side, if a bit distorted, and he turned his head left and right trying to catch a good glimpse of his Insecticon symbiote.

He hadn't been able to bear to look at it, her, when he had been let out of the medbay earlier. It looked a bit like some strange hairbun at the back of his head, if one was used to comparing Sunstreaker's fins to Princess Leia's buns (but never out loud!)

She didn't look that bad, really, especially with her dangly, proboscises-like bits shoved inside him… that thought made a shiver run down his spine. A fleeting second he felt tempted to throw up, but he shoved to the picture of those things in his brain aside and felt immediately better.

It was then that the lack of Ratchet's voice thundering him to lie back down got to him and Spike looked around in the most empty medbay. Where was everyone?

_[Alert: code Ark585nm] __Starscream's trine and all the Constructicons are converging on the coastline, ETA two breems. Dinobots and Aerialbots to the main entrance immediately. Repeat: Dinobots and Aerialbots to the main entrance. Cosmos out._

It flashed through Spike's mind, tinted in orange nearing red, yet not seen, spoken yet not heard. And he knew without a doubt that it was a memory. So now he knew that people were out defeating Megatron's Masterplan of the Week, but that didn't explain remembering something from time he had been out cold.

**(I will also allow you to access my memory, within agreed parameters, to compensate for the flaws in human memory storage system, but in return I demand)**

Something cold ran up and down Spike's spine and he hugged himself. They had talked, back in the safe gorge, but what had they talked about? It was so hard so remember, back in the spacious medbay, surrounded by the familiar orange walls. He was feeling terribly empty and first he thought it was psychological and psychosomatic and deep, but then his stomach grumbled and Spike realized he was mundanely hungry and felt silly. He wondered if there was any chance the Decepticons were wreaking havoc far enough from the Ark that someone would deliver pizza; fast food was a rare treat in the Ark and now he could almost taste tomato sauce and hot cheese and salami, could smell the wonderful, appetizing treat and his mouth wetted.

To the Pit with carrots and cottage cheese. Ratchet wasn't there to glare him into submission.

He wondered if he was strong enough to climb down the ladder and decided he was, stood up and walked to the edge of the berth. The gorge and Spessartine were still nagging at the edge of his mind, but he pushed that away. He wanted to have a break, now please, and it wasn't like anything was going to happen before Wednesday, right? It was only Saturday now, he was pretty sure.

Everybody wants to go to Heaven. Nobody wants to die.

* * *

It was no simple matter to be in contact with the forces on Earth. The sheer distance between the two planets saw to it that all time-sensitive messages needed to be sent through the Spacebridge. Shockwave controlled the Spacebridge network, however, and to attempt sending a femme through was always high risk operation, especially since the other end of the dimensional jump was in enemy territory also.

Their plan was simple: distraction team Alpha, consisting of Firestar, Aurora and the triapartite Eponym would place explosives along the underside of outer wall of Shockwave's facilities north-east side. It was comparatively rather lightly guarded and the obvious point of entry. Team Beta, the distraction number two led by Chromia, would attack the med supplies warehouses from west. Hence, Shockwave would believe that the real goal and would be quick to deploy his security forces on that section. If all went well they would get some new endonanites and spare parts out of this also. Meanwhile, with everyone hopefully distracted, Persona Omega, Elita 1 herself, would infiltrate the building quietly from the south side and hack into the Spacebridge controls.

It was simple on datapad and incredibly dangerous in practice.

"Are you sure about this, Elita?" Chromia asked heatedly. She had dragged her leader into a lesser used storage room. She was much too professional to undermine their commander in public, however much she thought this course of action unwise.

"The only way to make sure the messenger can get through the Decepticon territory on Earth is that I am the messenger and I use my ability," Elita pointed out. It was both her greatest power and weakness, the gift granted to her by Vector Sigma.

Orion Pax, Optimus Prime, had been given the Matrix of Leadership and Dion, Ultra Magnus, had been made duopartite, given the second body that was kept in stasis in between operations due to its high energon consuming: Metroplex. Elita 1 had been given the ability to briefly stop time. Sadly, this ability drained much of her spark energy and was extremely dangerous. A stasis field could create a bubble where only she existed, to cause her to cease moving in space/time, but nature abhors lack of motion just as much as it abhors a vacuum. Which was why she only used it in the direst of situations.

"You are risking this because Acid Storm said so? The mech is a few processors short a motherboard. Who can tell what he will do and why?" Chromia pleaded in the dim space filled with weapon spare parts and batteries in neatly color-coded crates. Her eyes cast blue light and shadows on her face, making her look almost like an oracle of Primus who had been etched into the walls of the Great Temple of Iacon. Elita had to fight a sense of foreboding.

"I would be concerned had he actually met Optimus, but as long as he remains a perfect icon for Acid Storm to obsess over obsess he will, loyally, as much as I loathe using this. We will be run over, easily so, if Shockwave manages to wake and subdue the Insecticons still in stasis in the Fortress of the Lost Ones. This must be a success."

This was how Elita 1 came to stand in the wildly pulsating red and golden light of a Spacebridge already activated, the window of opportunity rapidly closing and a peculiarly reddish-orange Decepticon pointing his gun at her as she threatened him, looking just as desperate as she felt. The bodies of his comrades littered the floor around them, but he paid them no heed and Elita dimmed her optics in suspicion; she had hit the room with powerful EMP burst before destroying the door. That the seeker was still standing wasn't too suspicious as some were better protected than others. What was odd was that there was a thin line of energon trickling from under the neck of the one con she could see without taking her optics from the seeker.

An inner conflict of some kind? She could use this. Should the alignment between Cybertron and Earth pass the Bridge couldn't be reactivated for three thousand astroseconds and she simply didn't have time like that, in the middle of Shockwave's keep. Both of them could destroy the other, but not without risking death in the process.

If only I could stop time now, she thought, but to travel through a Spacebridge was to take a shortcut through the space/time continuum. A very simple definition: space and time considered together as one entity. If she cut herself apart from the whole continuum and went through, well, it would not be pretty.

"I didn't see you, you didn't see me," Elita proposed uneasily. He didn't recognize the seeker, there were only two different builds among them and little personal touch in root mode, but something of this one was nagging at her. She made an image search, but at the same moment the seeker accepted and they turned as one, lunging through cylindrical tube two astroseconds before it closed.

What was traveling through the spacebridge like? It was an unnerving moment of nothing but herself in the whole universe. The search was concluded, no match, and her feet hit the ground made of eroded rocks and organic matter between two purple pylons, no Decepticon in sight other than the one who had gone through with her. She saw him in the neutral, colourless daylight of Earth and she swore. The orange paintjob had been merely a trick of the light the spacebridge had given off. The Decepticon in front of her was chrome accented with opticsore yellow. _They make a point, state they are invincible enough to not need camouflage_, Ultra Magnus had told her at the very beginning of the war. _How advanced is his stealth ability? He's neon yellow and __still__ can't be seen if he doesn't wish to._

Fearswoop. The very mech she had come to warn Optimus of.

* * *

Optimus Prime regarded the tactician standing before him with serene, confident air, but for those who knew him best, the distinct tilt of his head betrayed his exhaustion. There were the hundred everyday little things, like Prowl reporting the twins welding a sign into the door to Wheeljack's lab that said: Stand Back. Science in progress, abandon hope all ye who enter here! That point had been rendered moot when it had turned out that Wheeljack actually liked it, but that still left the other ninety nine that made him question from time to time whether he was running an army or an asylum. There was the big thing that hadn't changed into anything: strangely serene Spike, whom he hoped to be in denial because that was the better option, Spessartine, the Quintessons in his brig and what he should and could do about them.

Now there was also the matter of the unexplainable behaviour of Decepticons during the last two days. There had been five attacks, two of them to human settlements and three not. A small group had attacked a spot that had not been obviously remarkable in any way, razed it to the ground and retreated immediately. Much of Optimus' soldier's time had been spent on chasing the fleeing cons and Jazz had improvised an ops mission to try and find out why Megatron felt sudden, burning need to destroy a half hectare's worth of rocks and cacti and a cemetery, among other things.

Nothing had been found out thus far. Unless Megatron had come up with a way to make energon from sand and human bones there was nothing to gain.

"Megatron wouldn't do this if he didn't believe this will help him defeat us or at least score a minor victory," Prowl said. "While assuming tends to be dangerous, I believe that we must assume that some changed circumstances have brought this change in strategy, and the only major chance is the presence of Hepatizon and Molybdochalkos. They have both expressed belief that Principality Inquirata would follow them."

The atmosphere in Optimus Prime's office was uncommonly solemn. Or rather, it had been uncommonly solemn since they had arrived to Earth. Optimus remembered the orns when they had heard bad news after bad news, been pushed further and further into the night. Jazz's frame, the engines making his shell vibrate with barely leashed frustration, when he had brought new of yet again seemingly insurmountable odds. Ironhide who had escaped Ratchet to attend, the new welds still smelling like heat and liquid metal and energon, his optics dimmed. Red Alert barely controllable in his paranoia, it had permanently damaged his processor, but also saved them too many times to count.

Those who had been left to Cybertron, Elita 1 and Ultra Magnus and Alpha Trion. Optimus hoped Alpha Trion had been there to offer them his advice. _He _had been the one who had rallied Cybertronians against their enslavers; he would know what to do. But it was Optimus' job to know how to save his people now.

You fight fire with fire, the humans said. With fire the tactics worked if the firefighters were careful enough, mindful of the wind.

_Sunstreaker, Sideswipe. Bring Hepatizon and __Molybdochalkos to my office. _Open channel, so the rest of the command staff could argue if they so chose.

Consulting them now wouldn't hurt Spike in any way. Whatever the Decepticons were planning just might. It certainly was designed to harm them all.

_Are you sure, Prime? What if they are in fact in league with this Inquirata and this has all been a convoluted plan to get them into a position where they can influence our decisions. _Red Alert. He was flailing wildly, but his horns weren't sparking, so he was still all right, all right enough to not be relieved from duty.

_Fighting fire with fire, eh? We're not gonna blindly do whatever they tell us to, Red. We just need answers. _Ironhide. For now they were all fine, but that could chance anytime. They had become more secure on Earth, a planet generous with resources and allies, but this was the way of war. Optimus Prime despised it.

"And why are we talking over comm. when we are in the same room?" Jazz asked. His voice was languid, almost lazy, but Optimus could feel the tension of him, radiating through the link every Autobot shared with their Prime.

The pace of the war, of their very lives, had changed since they had woken on Earth where the planetary rotation period relative to the Sun – its mean solar day – was mere eighty-six thousands and four hundred seconds of mean solar time and where the longest average human lifespan was eighty-two point six years, in Japan. Optimus was reminded of this again when Hepatizon and Molybdochalkos walked into the room sandwiched between Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, their arms bound with energon bonds, but their overall demeanor anything but cowed. In fact they were being remarkably emotive for a species reputed for their cold disposition. Every diode in Hepatizon's body emitted bright blue and green and violet light and Molybdochalkos was only marginally subtler.

Earth-time things were progressing at snail's pace. By Cybertronian, and Quintessan, standards this must seem like they had relented immediately.

"_There has been a recent c__hange in Decepticon strategy and the only major chance in the circumstances is your presence. You have both expressed belief that Principality Inquirata would follow you. I demand your help in rectifying this situation._" They usually used Earth languages now, most often English as they were situated in a country where it was the most common language and it was spoken all around the planet, but there were nuances in Cybertronian that humans languages simply couldn't feature, one of them an old subdialect, Quintessa kind of old, that conveyed perfectly how accommodating Optimus Prime wasn't feeling now (theocratic-dialect).

Cybertron was a theocracy. It was their God who had changed, and their ruler. As much as Decepticons were loath to acknowledge it, the Prime had been chosen by Primus, their (superintelligence/spark-creator/energon-source/homeplanet/HolyHeavenlyBody/GOD) and as such he was the only one who – very, _very_ rarely – spoke that dialect anymore.

Hepatizon tempered and dimmed her body language accordingly and she and her companion received the analysis of the situation so far.

"This is more Molybdochalkos' pace than mine; he's the soldier. Dear?" She touched him briefly with one of her tentacles.

"I need to see a map of the attack sites," the mech said, standing straighter now, his fingers making movements that might have been some secret code or just normal Quintesson body language; Optimus had no way of knowing.

A map was provided to them both, sent as a compressed file. They had both been remarkably co-operative in all matters not involving Spike and Spessartine indeed, to the point where they had given their wireless codes and downloaded the language packs Ratchet had sent them. When asked why they were acting so uncharacteristically trusting Hepatizon had said that if she was going to become an Autobot she could as well get into the proper mindset immediately. Optimus had felt like banging his head against something hard.

It didn't take Molybdochalkos a full second to come up with an answer.

"I thought so. This might be some kind of explosive nano blockade. Those are air-tight chemical containers that have been programmed to open at command. The chemicals would have been chosen so they react violently with the planet's atmosphere. As you can see, these sites surround our base, though the circle isn't complete: there will most likely be at least two more attacks. We need to either remove the nanites or we need to remove the Ark." And he sent them technical data about what those nanites were exactly capable of. Optimus Prime's cadre then combined it with what they knew of planet Earth and human structures. It didn't program a pretty picture.

A pandemonium erupted.

"Even if we remove Ark that won't save the humans within the blast radius. What can we do to remove those nanites? If we try to remove the soil they were planted on the cons will just blow them up straight away," Ironhide demanded with a voice loud enough to carry over all the chatter that kept slipping from English to Cybetronian and back. Molybdochalkos didn't appear concerned.

"Simple. We will hack into them and change the ignition sequence, then program them to remove themselves and send them into space." His fingers were making those little movements again, now quicker, and his cooling systems were making very disparaging hum. "Inquirata obviously didn't want to give the Decepticons anything of real use. This is old technology." And the implication that what he and his lady had offered them was much better went unsaid, but not unheard.

"How can we hack into them? Do you have equipment?" Jazz asked him. He would be very interested, even beyond the present threat, of anything that could improve his ops.

"No." Molybdochalkos didn't sound apologetic or even particularly callous, only very matter-of-factly.

"I could re-invent and build us some, but that will take at least three orns," Hepatizon volunteered. "That will not be necessary if you will stop coddling Spike Witwicky, however."

"_What do you mean?"_ Optimus asked sharply, again in theocratic. That comment hadn't earned her any goodwill. But it didn't really effect Quintessons the same it effected Cybetronians; the cultural connotations were so different. Hepatizon pressed on.

"Spessartine was born hivemind and during the War of Wrath she took over quite many Cybertronians. I have familiarized her with Quintesson technology. If anyone can save us now she can."

Optimus could connect to the security cameras in the medbay. Spike was sitting cross-legged on the Nightingale berth, playing a game of cards that he identified with 72.5 percent probability as Old Maid; Spike was the one holding the Queen of Spades at the moment. Carly was sitting beside him in oil-splattered cover-alls, leaning against his shoulder and looking dreadfully tired; not only had she been worried about her boyfriend, but also assisted Ratchet with the repairs of the injured Autobots. Bluestreak was lying on the berth next to theirs, connected to the energon feeding system since his own tank and processing unit were still under repairs, and he was cheering both Spike and Sparkplug on equally.

Sparkplug seemed pale and nervous, Carly was tired to the bone and Bluestreak's chattering held pained, worried undertone, but Spike himself seemed at ease and content if not outright happy, and it was getting more and more worrying. Yesterday, finding him eating pizza like nothing was wrong in the world, walking around until Ratchet had caught up with him and not attempting to hide Spessartine with a hard hat might just have been a freak good day, but this continuing serenity... Optimus Prime had a bad feeling about this.

"Come up with another solution."

* * *

It had been barely believable; the bedrock telling an aurora borealis that he'd withstand the ages with her. Calabi-Yau was supposed to be there forever, Fearswoop was the bright, but fleeting one, but now she was the one gone. But he still had one, precious chance and he wasn't going to waste it.

* * *

AN: Sorry about the long wait; I have been Narutofied.


End file.
